waterways

Transport history was in the making a few days ago when a Bangladeshi ship carried a consignment of
1,000 tons of steel and iron sheets from the Port of Kolkata in West Bengal to India’s northeastern states, through Bangladesh. This first-ever transshipment of transit goods marked the formal launch of transit trade and transport between India and Bangladesh using a combination of river and land routes.

Senior government officials and top diplomats from both countries, including the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka, the Bangladesh Minister and Secretary of Shipping, the Senior Secretary of Commerce, and officials of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, attended an inaugural ceremony to observe the unloading of goods at Ashuganj Port on the bank of the Meghna River, according to media reports. The general cargo terminal at Ashuganj Port will be rehabilitated and modernized under the newly approved regional IDA project to support Bangladesh’s waterways to handle the loading and unloading of large volumes of cargo.

Most of us attendees were novices in the area of inland water transportation in India and were curious to know what Arnab Bandyopadhay, Senior Transport Engineer at the World Bank’s India country office would say.

Vietnam is one of the world's development success stories. It is undeniable.

Between 1990 and 2010, Vietnam grew at an average annual rate of 7.4 percent—one of the world’s top five growth performance records, anywhere, over the same 20-year period. In the process, the incidence of poverty has declined dramatically, from 58 percent in 1993 to about 10 percent today. Nowadays Vietnam is no longer considered a low-income country: it has attained lower-middle income status.

Yet this successful economic transition has also generated a number of challenges. Chief among them is that of sustaining economic growth going forward.